


for want of a burger

by sullypants



Series: a comic miniverse [1]
Category: Archie Comics, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Parallel Universes, Time Police AU, Time Travel, in which the comicsverse meets tv-riverdale, yes you heard me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:10:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23902627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullypants/pseuds/sullypants
Summary: Jughead Jones is at least eighty-percent certain he's in the right universe.That percentage decreases rapidly once he runs into Betty Cooper.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Series: a comic miniverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1725463
Comments: 69
Kudos: 173
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees, 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards — Winners!





	for want of a burger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loveleee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/gifts).



> A Betty/Jughead prompt from loveleee: "time travel." Yet another prompt that I've let spiral out of control.

Jughead steps forward. He looks left, he looks right, and once he’s taken the lay of the land he spins back around to tell January, “I think this is it.” He raises both thumbs in triumph. “We made it.”

January steps next to him and narrows her eyes into the dark of the night. She purses her lips and shakes her head.

“No.” She says. After a beat. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“No, no—this is it! Look—look at Pop’s! That’s my Pop’s, _I_ know.”

January doesn’t seem convinced, and Jughead lets his shoulders slump in exaggerated frustration. He groans, perhaps a little theatrically—but he’s _tired_ and he’s _hungry_ , and he just wants to be in his own time-stream already. January continues to shake her head in uncertainty, and Jughead thinks he’s about to lose it. 

January places her hands on her hips. “I’m going to take a closer look, walk down the street and back, scope things out.” She turns to walk away before she suddenly whips back around and pokes a finger to his chest. Jughead rears back a little. 

( _Exhausted_.)

“Do not. I repeat, do. Not. Go anywhere.” She emphasizes each word with a stabby-stab of her nail into his chest, and when she turns to walk away, Jughead can’t keep from rolling his eyes.

He turns back to watch Pop’s across the road, rubbing his chest slightly ( _Aren’t there, like, nail length standards for the Time Police force?_ , he wonders.) 

He crosses his arms across his chest and cocks his head in consideration. This is his Pop’s; it’s definitely his Pop’s. Maybe it’s nighttime, and a little dark out here, but it _has_ to be his Pop’s. 

An idea occurs to him. He turns his head in the direction January'd wandered off, but she’s no longer in sight. 

He rocks back onto his heels, considering. He looks again at Pop’s.

_Fuck it_ , he thinks, and strides purposely forward and across the street. 

The goddamn door is locked. The door of the twenty-four hour diner is _locked._ There’s even a closed sign on it. Sure, he hasn’t had any late nights at Pop’s recently, but he’s surprised Pop hadn’t given him a heads up about this change. He thought they had something.

Jughead leans his face closer to the glass and surveys the diner’s interior, and then—he spots her. 

Veronica Lodge in a yellow Pop’s uniform.

_That’s odd_ , he thinks, but before he can ponder it some more, she’s spotted him.

He leans back as she unlocks the door and swings it open. She holds it open for him, nods him into the diner. 

“C’mon,” she waves an impatient hand at him, “hurry up, so I can lock the door again. I’m trying to wrap up here.”

Jughead narrows his eyes, but—this is Pop’s. _Right?_

He crosses the threshold and looks around as Veronica locks the door behind him. It certainly looks like Pop’s. 

Veronica rushes past him again, back behind the counter, and she yells at him over her shoulder, “Your girl’s downstairs.”

“Hmm?,” Jughead tears his eyes from the empty booths as Veronica begins to disappear into the kitchen.

Her head pops back out. “ _Downstairs_.” 

“Right,” Jughead nods. “Right.” He rocks back-and-forth on his heels again while Veronica watches him. 

“ _Go_ ,” she tells him, waving toward the phone booth near the register, and Jughead starts. He begins to move in the general direction she’s waved.

“Hey,” he yells at Veronica’s retreating back, “can I get a burger?”

“ _No_ , the kitchen’s closed,” she yells, and he sighs.

The phone booth...isn’t a phone booth.

(This _might_ not be his Pop’s, he’s starting to realize.)

There’s a door in the phone-booth, and it’s not the door _to_ the phone-booth, it’s a whole false wall-hidden-door sort of situation and Jughead’s not sure he’d have figured it out if it hadn’t already been ajar. 

He considers his situation. He should probably get out of dodge before January realizes he wandered. 

But…

He’s come so far already. What’s the harm?

The harm appears to be _very_ possible, because when Jughead walks down the stairs and into some kind of empty-underground-bar-faux-speakeasy-too-cool-for-Riverdale sort of situation, he’s dumbstruck.

But no more shocked than he is when Betty Cooper pops up from the sole occupied table in the place, with a smile and a “Juggie!” to him in greeting.

Jughead is now ninety-eight percent sure this isn’t his Riverdale. He realizes that January will be _pissed_. 

And he didn’t even get a burger. 

But now Betty is walking toward him, weaving through the empty tables of this dimly lit space. 

“I thought you were at Stonewall, I wasn’t expecting you to visit tonight.” She stops in front of him and peers up at him. True to form, Betty’s smile is wide and bright. 

_This is Betty_ , he tells himself. He can handle this. Betty is lovely in every parallel universe he’s visited. It’s one of the best consistencies, he’d argue. 

But—Stonewall? _Play along_ , he thinks. _Be cool_. 

He nods. 

And nods some more.

_Talk_ , he thinks, and Betty stares at him quizzically. 

“Yeah!” he says just a little too loudly. “Just...a visit.” He smiles and hopes it doesn’t come across too maniacally. 

_Calm_ , he tells himself. 

She cocks her head to the side, still looking up at him sweetly. ( _Betty’s the best_ , he thinks.) She smiles again.

“Well...I’m glad.” She reaches out and fingers the zipper of his hoodie. She frowns a little. “Is this new?,” she asks.

“Ahhhhh—yeah,” he nods, “Yes, yes, it is.”

Betty shrugs, and before Jughead can think anything beyond _whew, okay, I need to get out of here_ , Betty steps even closer to him, until there is suddenly no space between them, and then she’s up on her tip-toes and her hands are on his shoulders and—she’s kissing him. 

Betty Cooper is kissing him. 

He is now ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine percent certain this isn’t his Riverdale. 

But he can’t think about anything because all there is is Betty Cooper’s lips on his, and how warm and soft they are, and how gentle-yet-firm her hands are as they move to his jaw, and then how nice her waist feels under his hands ( _how the hell did his hands get on her waist?_ , he wonders), and then—it’s over. 

He’s a little dumbstruck, but Betty just smiles, takes his hand, and leads him over to the bar. 

He’s gotta get out of here.

And yet… Jughead doesn’t think it's polite to kiss-and-run.

And he’s still trying to figure out the situation.

Does this mean that this universe’s Jughead is in the regular habit of kissing this universe’s Betty? 

This is a lot to take in.

He needs a moment.

He needs several moments. 

All he can do is sit next to Betty and try to be cool as she’s telling him all about something to do with _Stonewall_ and _preppies_ and _video-tapes_ and _Charles_ and a hundred other things, and all he can do is try not to focus too hard on her lips while she’s talking because he doesn’t want to be a creep. But those lips had just been on _his_ lips. 

It’s a _lot_ to take in. 

He needs a burger. 

He’s not certain how to handle...any of this, and so when Betty suddenly goes silent, he panics— _this is where he talks, isn’t it? Shit, what do I say?_

But when he looks at Betty, she appears to be still mid-word. She’s frozen mid-word. She’s literally frozen, and Jughead waves his hand in front of her face but—nothing. 

He whips his head around the empty speakeasy only to find January McAndrews upon the stairs, and she is staring daggers at him. 

He waves. “Hiiii,” he says.

January rolls her eyes to the sky in exasperation.

January is nothing if not capable, and so it’s like none of it had even happened. This universe’s Jughead had never walked into Pop’s on this random night, never seen Veronica, never kissed Betty. 

They try a few more times, and finally, _finally_ , land in the Riverdale Jughead recognizes as home. 

Back to normal. 

But it isn’t back to normal, because the next time Jughead finds himself at Pop’s, he’s next to Betty Cooper in a booth and she’s telling him how Archie has _again_ blown her off in order to take out Veronica, and he’s just exasperated at how repetitive it all is. 

It doesn’t have to be like this, he thinks. 

Archie doesn’t deserve her. 

“Archie doesn’t deserve you,” he finds himself saying out loud. Betty eyes him quizzically. 

“What?” she asks.

He shakes his head. 

He purses his lips, bites his tongue.

_Fuck it_ , he thinks. 

He leans back from his milkshake and looks Betty square in the eye.

“Betty.”

She’s silent.

“Betty, don’t freak out.”

She nods, waves at him _to get on with it_.

“I’m gonna kiss you now.”

He reaches out, frames her jaw with his hands—and kisses her.

After a moment of shock—she kisses him back.


End file.
